That cheaper CAD subscription caught me with a data lockout after 90 days

I switched to a budget drafting software to save $35 a month and lost access to all my project files when the free trial quietly ended, the export tool was hidden behind a paywall. Took me 6 hours in Denver to redo a set of plumbing details from scratch on the old system. Anyone else get burned by a low cost tool that holds your drawings hostage?

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barnes.wren23d ago

holds your drawings hostage" feels like kind of a stretch to me. I mean, the trial ended, that's how trials work, and yeah it stinks that the export was locked but you got 90 days of cheap drafting out of it. Six hours is a rough afternoon but it's not like the files got deleted off your drive or something, they're just stuck in a format you can't open without paying. Idk, maybe I'm just numb to this stuff from years of software nonsense but this reads more like a lesson about reading the fine print than some evil scheme. Seems like the real issue is you didn't keep a backup on the old system while the trial was still going.

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